The Great Giveaway was awesome!

I love The Great Giveaway!!  Every year, it never ceases to amaze me how many people come out for it – both volunteers from GENESIS, and people from the community.  This year we were specifically praying that 600 people would come, and God totally blew us away when over 800 people showed up!!!  About 15 minutes before we opened there were over 300 people waiting, and almost everything was gone within the first 45 minutes.  It was NUTS!  But SO FUN!

It took us a month to collect all of the items that were given away, a week to organize it all, and about 3 hours to put it all out on display.

The Great Giveaway 2012

The Great Giveaway 2012

The Great Giveaway 2012

The Great Giveaway 2012

The Great Giveaway 2012

People began lining up and waiting by about 7:30am (the giveaway began at 10am)

The Great Giveaway 2012

My friend Tracy did a fabulous job organizing the event!

The Great Giveaway 2012

My lovely friend Christie was passing out balloons (photo taken on instagram).  I heart this picture of her :)

The Great Giveaway 2012

All the volunteers gathered to pray right before we opened the “doors”

The Great Giveaway 2012

The masses are getting excited!!

The Great Giveaway 2012

Check out this quick little video I made of the opening of the floodgates!  It was NUTS!!!

The Great Giveaway 2012

The Great Giveaway 2012

The Great Giveaway 2012

The Great Giveaway 2012

This guy was the big winner of the day, and walked away with a FREE 60″ TV!!  He was pretty pumped to say the least ;)

The Great Giveaway 2012

The Great Giveaway 2012

My brother, Michael, did an awesome job with the bullhorn, keeping everyone entertained and informed!

The Great Giveaway 2012

The kids probably had the most fun!  I love these two, and their deep discussion about stuffed animals.  It looks like intense negotiations, haha!

The Great Giveaway 2012

Games inside for the kiddos

The Great Giveaway 2012

And a bouncy house outside for the kids big and small ;)

The Great Giveaway 2012

Um, perhaps they were over-sugared…  My nephew Tristan would beg to differ

The Great Giveaway 2012

Facepainting fun!  My niece Reilly and her best buddy Maddie got matching face parrots

The Great Giveaway 2012

Oh Dylan, you make an adorable basketball!

The Great Giveaway 2012

My nephew Caeden – almost as excited about the hot dog as he is about that container full of candy!

The Great Giveaway 2012

We grilled and gave away almost 1,000 hot dogs!!

The Great Giveaway 2012

I have no clue how much popcorn and cotton candy we made, but Bettina was COVERED in it!

The Great Giveaway 2012

Seriously, there were SO many PEOPLE there!!!!  But within an hour almost all of this was gone, and it was just people eating hot dogs and playing games.

The Great Giveaway 2012

SUCH a fun day!!!  I can’t wait for next year!!!!

to view more of my favorites from The Great Giveaway, check out the album on Facebook!

The Great Giveaway – TOMORROW!

For the past 3 years, my church, GENESIS, has done an event every May called The Great Giveaway.  Basically, it’s a HUGE yard sale where everything is FREE, and it’s pretty awesome!   We believe that God is generous and He gives so much to us (provision, life, love, salvation, and abundant blessings), and that we are called to be generous as He’s been generous to us.  So each year we collect thousands of items – clothing, furniture, electronics, books, toys, strollers, appliances, home decor, linens, and more – and we give them away to anyone who needs/wants them!  Plus, we throw in some super fun stuff for the kids to do (even a bouncy house!!), and we feed everyone while we’re at it!  Frankly, it’s the funnest day of the year, and I’m getting super excited for tomorrow!!!!!

Last year, everyone lined up and was waiting for it to begin, and when it did, they all RAN in to check it all out!

The kids LOVE it!

The grown ups have been known to have some fun too…

And it’s always fun to see people walking away with things they really NEED!!

This year we’ve got about THREE TIMES MORE stuff to giveaway than we did last year!!!!  Check out more photos of what we’ve got in store on the Facebook invite here.

The Great Giveaway is TOMORROW, Saturday May 19th from 10am – 12pm at GENESIS church (16 Wheeling Ave, Woburn)

I hope you can stop by and check it out!!!  Be sure to say HI –  I’ll be the one walking around with a camera ;)

You can see more of the fun from last year’s Great Giveaway here.  And check out my post about the first Great Giveaway here.